To take pornography literally is like reading Homer's Odyssey as the story about an actual soldier having trouble getting home to his wife, instead of as a mythic tale about the shipwrecks, allures and voyages we all face. Of course plain, prurient pornography is inimical to all spiritual values, as is any kind of literalism. But I can't believe that the millions of people who are drawn to pornography are morally dead. I think most of us are fascinated by the human body and by its intriguing way of making love. The human body is like the night sky: it makes us think about the nature of things, who we are, and what life is all about.
Lovemaking is a form of contemplation anyway. We leave ordinary reality for a while and engage in words and actions that would never be part of daily life. Imagination comes to the foreground, and memory and passion, rather than practicality and rationality, guide our actions. In all these ways and more, sex and religion share basic elements.
To view this coupling of human bodies in a magazine or a movie is very much like contemplating a religious image. It gives rise to wonder. It fascinates and mesmerizes. I don't see the harm in looking at sexual images, but I do see harm in trying to control sex for moralistic purposes. I also see harm in presenting any imagery literally and unintelligently. The sexual images in Hollywood movies are often puerile in tone. They throw sex in our face with no attention to its heart and soul. The great paintings and sculptures of nudes and lovemaking (I'm thinking of the erotic temples of India and Pompeii and Greece) take the imagination deeper. Our repression of pornography keeps it from being more intelligently woven into the whole of our cultural life.
I have read art historians who say that painters of the past liked to depict the Greek Goddesses and a figure like Saint Sebastian, martyred with very little clothing on, as an excuse for the sexuality in their work. I don't know the history, but I am never surprised to see religion and sex go hand in hand. They are both closely tied to the ultimate mysteries that define our lives. I would like to think that the extremely thoughtful and clever artists of medieval and Renaissance Christianity were aware that all sex is tantric, meaning that sex is infinitely closer to religion than the repression of sex is. To make connections between a saint's devotion to God and his sexuality requires quite a profound notion of both sex and religion. St. Sebastian, celebrated for the eroticism in the way his body was exposed and penetrated by arrows, was a saint of healing, and I have no doubt that sexuality is deeply implicated in our illnesses and their healing.
Francoeur and Pagels respond |
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